This invention relates generally to cable stringing equipment and, more particularly, to a stringer wheel and cable guide apparatus for maintaining a conductor cable, communication line, or the like securely nested in the groove of a stringer wheel during stringing, especially when the cable is previously or subsequently at an angle relative to the stringer wheel.
Aerial cables are installed in many above ground applications, such as electrical conductive wires extending between poles or towers, telephone lines extending between telephone poles, fiber optic cables for data communications, and the like. Miles of these cables are typically installed by using motorized puller that pulling the wires from a spool through a series of stringer wheels to their eventual position atop spaced apart poles or towers. Each stringer wheel, also referred to as a pulley or stringer block, may define a groove or channel into which the cable is nested in order not to fall out and control over its alignment and direction.
Although the cables may extend for miles in generally linear arrangements such that a loss of cable alignment in the groove is unlikely, there are occasions when mild to sharp angles or turns are needed. The pulling of a cable at an angle to the stringing wheel increasing the risk that the cable will jump out of the groove and completely lose contact with the stringer wheel—a condition that may require the entire pulling operation to pause while human effort is expended to physically realign the cable. In fact, a human line worker may have to be positioned at the location of the angled line to manually hold the cable in place—sometimes by use of a bucket lift or by climbing a tower.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a stringer wheel and cable guide apparatus having upstanding roller members positioned proximate upstream and downstream edges of a rim of a stringer wheel assembly that urge a cable to stay nested in the wheel's cable receiving groove, especially when the cable is being pulled at an angle relative to the wheel. Further, it would be desirable to have a stringer wheel and cable guide apparatus that is selectively coupled to either side of the wheel assembly depending on the angle or direction the cable will be pulled on its way to a next wheel assembly.